The month long Challenge is just that — an excellent way to challenge yourself to “drive down your miles” and reduce your emissions. Choose alternatives to driving alone and track your impact on air quality.

(And keep an eye on the leader board for the Salt Lake City Corporation network, which is SLCgreen’s home team!)

Carpool — Carpooling involves more than one person traveling together in a car and can be used for many occasions including commuting to work, attending special events or taking kids to school, practices or recreational activities. This strategy requires some coordination of schedules, but can be easily implemented to achieve significant results.

Telework — Teleworking is possible from just about anywhere – from home, a telecenter, the local coffee shop or anywhere that has a wireless Internet connection. Teleworking can include conference calling or video conferencing for meetings instead of driving to an off-site location or working from a remote office.

Skip the trip — The skip the trip strategy is as easy as it sounds. Just plan ahead to avoid unnecessary trips. These can be trips taken for work or for home activities.

Registration

This year there is a new and greatly improved tracking tool for the Clear the Air Challenge. The new tool will require all users to re-register, but the registration process will only take about 30 seconds and users now have the ability to sign up using their Facebook profile.

During the registration process you will be asked to join a team/network, although it’s not required. If you do not see your team/network listed, please email tracker@ppbh.com with the following information:

Team/network name

Team/network admin name (the person on your team who will have admin rights)

Admin’s email

Team/network address

Team/network description (a little about who your team is- optional)

Prizes

The Challenge has approximately $10,000 in prizes to give out this year to participants. A number of weekly prizes will be randomly given to people who have earned badges. Grand prizes will be given to the winners in various categories, including: most trips saved, most miles saved and overall champion. The Grand Prize for the overall individual champion will be a $1,300 pair of powder skis provided by Ramp Sports.

New technology

Here are some of the features of the new technology implemented this year:

Social media integration: Sign up with your Facebook account and share Clear the Air Challenge posts to your Timeline.

Easier tracking and recording of saved trips:

Set up favorite trips – Trips you take often can be easily added to your tracker dashboard

Multiple day trip recording – Forgot to track each time you took the TRAX over the past week? Simply click on each of the days you made the same trip and record them all at once!

Trip Planner: Not sure how you might use alternative transportation to get somewhere rather than your car? Simply enter in your starting and ending locations, and you’ll receive carpool, vanpool, transit, walking and biking options to get to your destination. Use this feature all year round whether you are tracking trips or not!

The Salt Lake City SmartTrips program recently sent out a postcard to residents living in the city’s Fairpark neighborhood. But due to a printing error, the postcard is missing some important instructions!

On the back of the postcard, a small pair of scissors and dotted line were omitted, which indicate that residents should cut the postcard in half and mail it back to receive their free goodies.